President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance with Democratic Republic of the Congo's Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba in the White House Oval Office, June 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
President Donald Trump's administration suffered two major "humiliations and failures" over the weekend, with a new MS NOW analysis pinning the blame on his ongoing habit of saddling his top advisors with "impossible tasks."
This weekend, peace talks to try and end the war in Iran fell through in Pakistan, with the U.S. responding by launching a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Shortly after the development, MAGA's favorite European leader, Viktor Orbán, was ousted as prime minister of Hungary in a landslide election defeat. In both of these matters, Trump had dispatched Vice President JD Vance to push for the administration's desired result, saddling his would-be successor with yet more impossible challenges.
Steve Benen is a longtime MS NOW contributor and producer for host Rachel Maddow. On Monday, he published an analysis of Vance's growing list of failed ventures under Trump, marking a tenure in office seemingly defined by failure.
As Benen noted, Vance's only real accomplishment in politics was winning a Senate seat in 2022, but even then, it was "underwhelming," as his margin of victory was meager compared to other GOP victories in Ohio that year. His time as vice president also got off to an inauspicious start when it fell to him to generate support for Trump's much-hated first attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz, whose nomination ultimately failed amid scandal and his toxic reputation.
"Indeed, the events of December 2024 came to mind this week as Vance suffered back-to-back embarrassments," Benen wrote. "The vice president led a U.S. delegation in Pakistan for talks with Iran, which ended in failure due in part to the instructions he received from Trump; and less than a day later, the world learned of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán’s landslide defeat, despite Vance having campaigned on his behalf. These were arguably two of the most important tasks the vice president has been assigned while in office, and both ended in failure."
Benen listed off some of Vance's other prominent face plants as VP: failing to convince Trump against the Iran war, failing to build diplomatic support for Trump's plot to annex Greenland, failing to boost Germany's far-right candidates in a recent round of elections and a host of instances when Trump has directly contradicted his public statements.
"The vice president, in other words, isn’t exactly racking up victories," Benen added.
Benen wrapped up his analysis by citing another recent take on Vance's misfortunes from Dana Milbank, writing for the New York Times: "Does Mr. Vance still not realize that the joke is on him? The interesting thing is not that he keeps debasing himself but that he gets less and less in return each time. As his political fortunes dim, his soul has become a depreciating asset."
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